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The Great Republic 

The United States of North America 



One Flag and One Official Language from the 
Colombia-Panama Boundary to the Arctic Pole 

JOHN ALLAN WYETH, MD., LL.D. 



LOOKING FORWARD 






COPYRIGHT JOHN ALLAN WYETH, 1916 



\1A 



The Great Republic 



THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA 



One Flag and One Official Language from the Colombia- 
Panama Boundary to the Arctic Pole 

John Allan Wyeth, M. D., LL.D. 



This government cannot endure in that assurance of 
peace so essential to happiness and prosperity, with chaotic 
Mexico, the land of revolution, bloodshed and demonstrated 
incapacity, on one side, and on the other, a Monarchical Dom- 
inion, consecrated to the rule of Kings, and to the principle of 
INHERITED PRIVILEGE. These facts, every thoughtful 
American of the United States, must sooner or later recognize, 
for in their hands rests the ultimate solution of our national 
problem. 

The first essential is UNITY OF LANGUAGE in all gov- 
ernmental relations. Without restricting the privilege of any 
individual or community to use among themselves the lan- 
guage of their choice, English must, on the NORTH AMERI- 
CAN CONTINENT be the accepted means of official inter- 
communication. 

History is largely a narrative of wars waged between 
peoples speaking different languages. Europe is to-day an 
armed camp. Fully 20,000,000 men, capable under peaceful 
conditions which UNITY OF LANGUAGE, government and 
interests would make possible, of quadrupling the products 
essential to the happiness and the moral, mental and physical 
advancement of mankind, are armed with the most expensive 
and improved machinery of destruction, and instead of peace- 
ful production, are killing each other by the hundreds of thou- 
sands, and laying waste vast areas in which the innocent and 
helpless suffer and perish with those who fight. 



And history is only repeating itself. A century ago, in 
the invasion of Russia and at Leipsic, more nations than are 
now at war were in arms. It was the same before Napoleon, 
and will be the same after the Kaiser, so long as the Russian, 
the Turk, the Servian, the Italian, the German, the French and 
the English with their different languages continue to culti- 
vate national exclusiveness and to strive for commercial 
supremacy. 

The verdict of our Civil War was the indestructibility of 
the American Union. The idea, which had taken hold of the 
minds of many of our foremost statesmen, especially in the 
section where African slavery existed, and where the teach- 
ings of Calhoun had long been inculcated, that secession and 
the establishment of another republic within the limits of the 
then United States, was the inherent right of the several 
States, was not to prevail. That idea was wiped out in the blood 
of a mighty war, which carried to untimely graves a million 
men. Henceforth, there could be but one flag over the Union 
of the States, "one and inseparable, now and forever." THIS 
VERDICT OPENED THE VISTA OF THE GREAT 
REPUBLIC, THE ULTIMATE UNION OF ALL THE 
PEOPLES OF THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMER- 
ICA, UNDER THAT FLAG WHICH SHALL BE THE 
SYNONYM OF LIBERTY AND LAW. 

It was the despair of securing liberty of thought and 
speech and action which drove our fathers westward, across 
the then almost unknown seas, to seek a home in an unex- 
plored wilderness. They sought and found a land where they 
and their children might live and be free from the tyranny of 
INHERITED PRIVILEGE; where the opportunity for pre- 
ferment was open to all. The form of government which they 
evolved, and the developments which have followed within 
the limits of the republic their courage and wisdom established 
are the wonders of history. 

To the Declaration of Independence and the war of the 
Revolution, which were protests against tyranny, there was 
added, in 1823, a second declaration of far-reaching signifi- 
cance, which, by common consent, has become an essential 
article of the political faith of the one hundred million human 
beings who control the destiny of the Western Hemisphere. 
"The American continents, by the free and independent condi- 
tion which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth 
not to be considered for future colonization by European 

©CU431020 

MAY II 1916 



powers." But once has the Monroe Doctrine been seriously 
challenged. In 1861, taking advantage of the disturbed con- 
ditions due to our Civil War, Great Britain, Spain and France 
(with Austria as a silent partner) undertook the establishment 
of an empire in Mexico. When our war was over, William 
H. Seward, Secretary of State, backed by the victorious army 
of the Union, demanded and secured the withdrawal of all for- 
eign troops; and the final scheme of imperial colonization in 
America died with Maximilian. 

To this far-sighted statesman was due the further empha- 
sis of this doctrine, when, in that same year of 1867 the United 
States purchased from Russia the domain of Alaska, adding 
to our territory 395,329,600 acres, or 590,884 square miles of 
land, an area equal approximately to the twenty Atlantic and 
Gulf Coast States east of the Mississippi. 

Between this territory and the present northern boundary 
of the United States stretches the vast area of British Colum- 
bia and the Dominion of Canada, destined in the fullness of 
time, and by A PEACEFUL AND BLOODLESS COM- 
MERCIAL CONQUEST, IN WHICH MUTUAL INTER- 
ESTS SHALL BE SAFEGUARDED AND THE ADDED 
STRENGTH OF UNION AND BROTHERHOOD MADE 
EVIDENT, to be an important part of the one great Govern- 
ment, the Republic of North America. 

The enactment and enforcement of just laws, and the 
studied cultivation of personal and commercial amity, cannot 
fail to bring into ultimate union, without the shedding of 
blood, the two nations which, now separated by an artificial 
boundary, are in reality united by the common ties of origin 
and language. 

It is, however, toward the South that our national destiny 
is calling with unmistakable urgency and directness. Mexico 
has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. The 
records of mankind do not contain a story more tragic or 
pathetic, and withal, more hopeless. No student of history 
can doubt the absolute incapacity of that people for self-gov- 
ernment. Revolution has followed revolution in such assured 
succession that anarchy is supreme. From 1821, when Span- 
ish sovereignty ceased, to the murder of Madero and the 
accession of Huerta, Mexico has had sixty-four different 
rulers. Leaving out the autocracy of Juarez and Diaz, who 
ruled with merciless severity and to whom protest or opposi- 
tion meant banishment, imprisonment, confiscation or death, 



the average duration of the term of office of the sixty other 
rulers was eight months. Several served only a few days; 
one was president for only 26 minutes, and, incredible as it 
must appear, in a single instance, Comonfort joined in an 
insurrection and overthrew his own government. Since the 
death of Madero, Huerta, Carbajal, Guiterrez, Garza and Car- 
ranza, have passed across the stage in the opera bouffe of 
presidents. 

Here, at our door, its northern boundary line for 1,993 
miles in touch with ours, is a country with an area of 767,000 
square miles, nearly as large as all of the United States east 
of the Mississippi River, a land so rich in natural resources 
that Humboldt termed it the "World's Treasure House." 
Wasted and impoverished as it is by years of misrule and 
bloodshed, Mexico is still the Land of Opportunity. Richer 
than any other country of equal area in mines of gold and 
silver, untold wealth waits only on the enterprise which a 
stable government, good roads and cheapened transportation 
will assure. 

As to agriculture, all the cereals of the temperate zones 
are native there, and the great southern staple, cotton, is 
profitably cultivated. Corn, the chief crop, produces four or 
five times as much as our best farming lands. McHugh, the 
historian, described vast fields, the stalks bearing each from 
six to sixteen fully developed ears. 

To the fruits of our own country, are added here the 
world-marketed banana, pineapple and citrous products. The 
foothills of the mountain ranges are heavily timbered with 
pine, while the tropical forests are rich with mahogany and 
other hard woods. Sisal fibre from a single species of cactus 
in Yucatan to the value of many millions is imported to the 
United States, while in the northern States are the only great 
cattle ranges north of the Isthmus of Panama. 

Of the 15,000,000 inhabitants, 1,000,000 are Caucasian; 
2,000,000 of mixed blood, and 12,000,000 are Indian descend- 
ants of the natives dwelling there at the time of the Spanish 
conquest. There are 133 separate tribes, speaking fifty-three 
different languages, and numerous dialects, a condition which 
makes inter-tribal communication and the establishment of 
peaceful relations impossible. James Bryce, in his "South 
America," referring to Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, says: "In 
such countries, there can be very little public opinion common 

4 



to the nation, because the means of inter-communication are 
defective and slow. The existence in the same state of dif- 
ferent races, speaking different languages, prevents the homo- 
geneity and solidarity which are almost indispensable condi- 
tions to the success of democratic government." 

Not the least hopeful feature of the Mexican problem is 
the moral degeneracy of the peons, who make up the vast 
majority of the population, due to the almost universal con- 
sumption of "pulque" the national intoxicant, and to the wide- 
spread disregard of the marital relation. McHugh says : "The 
chief source of the disputes which lead to bloodshed among 
the poorer classes is the widely prevailing immorality. Mar- 
riage among them has no sacred meaning, and more than 
half the total births in Mexico are illegitimate. 

Flandrau, writing from the experience of years with the 
peons on a coffee plantation, says: "Free love is not a social 
experiment here, it is an institution. Their habits of living 
are such that to a child of seven or eight there are no mys- 
teries. Very few of the married people on my ranch are mar- 
ried. There is so sense of obligation, no respect for a higher 
authority than oneself, no adverse public opinion." 

A century of misgovernment and unrest has naturally 
contributed to this absence of moral restraint and to the wide- 
spread savagery which prevails. A recital of the authenti- 
cated barbarities which are constantly occurring would be as 
painful as it is unnecessary. A single paragraph from 
McHugh's "Modern Mexico" (1914) is significant: 

"So long as he, the peon, is kept in hand, he is fairly quiet 
and tractable ; but when he takes to the road, and becomes his 
own master, he is turbulent, savage and brutal, displaying all 
the cruelty, lust and disregard of human life and suffering that 
is characteristic of the American Indian. The fiendish savag- 
ery of this class has been manifested again and again during 
the past three years by endless incidents, like the treatment 
of the women at the San Vincente mine in Guerrero, and at the 
wreck of the train to Cuernavaca last May, when the injured 
men were murdered, and the women passengers ravished and 
then thrown into the burning train, that had been deliberately 
set on fire." It does not detract from the significance of this 
awful incident to know that it occurred almost within sight of 
the Capital of Mexico. 

To the shame of our government and of our people, we, 
the self-appointed supervisors of the political affairs of this 



helpless and unhappy land, while not permitting another na- 
tion to intervene, sit idly by, culpable witnesses of these 
horrors. A President of the United States and his ambassa- 
dor, cognizant of Mexican methods, and in full knowledge 
that Gustave Madero had been shot without trial, failed to 
take such stand, after the arrest and deposition of President 
Madero as would have prevented the shocking murder which 
transpired. Nor has the administration which succeeded done 
else than invite discredit by its policy of vacillation, seemingly 
uncertain to-day of what it may approve or disapprove to- 
morrow. Ships laden with munitions of war, to prevent the 
delivery of which the seizure of a port, (in itself an act of 
war, and which cost a number of lives) was justified, were 
permitted to deliver the same cargo at another port. Our 
officials are imprisoned, our flag insulted, our sailors arrested 
and paraded under guard, and our country boldly invaded by 
armed bandits, and our soldiers and citizens murdered. There 
can be no practicable solution to this serious problem, except 
intervention and annexation; and common sense and human- 
ity call for immediate action. Our rendition of the Monroe 
Doctrine makes it imperative. By no other means than by the 
superior force of the United States can anarchy and murder 
be stopped and a humane order established. The misfortunes 
of Mexico are the cumulative product of centuries of misrule ; 
and her people, savage or civilized, should be judged in char- 
ity and dealt with in mercy. 

Of the 15,000,000 human beings whose chief avocation 
is revolution, fully 12,000,000 are bound in the hope- 
less servitude of peonage, a condition more deplorable than 
was that of the negro slaves in our Southern States. Practi- 
cally all the land is owned or controlled by the State, or by a 
landed oligarchy. Seventy-two individuals own all the land 
in Yucatan, the area of which is more than three times as 
large as Massachusetts, twenty-seven individuals are the 
proprietors of another State, and one citizen, General Torra- 
zas, owns 20,000,000 acres. Years of poverty, ignorance and 
oppression have made the poor so poor that banditry is their 
only resort. Until the strong hand of a humane government 
corrects these abuses, Mexico will not cease to be the disgrace 
of civilization, a disgrace which the people of the United 
States must share. 

Intervention without annexation can only prolong a cruel 
experiment. When our flag goes over the border, it must stay 
forever. I challenge the right to assert that "never again 



would the United States seek one foot of additional territory 
by conquest." The Chief Executive, exercising the powerful 
influence of his position, cannot prescribe a national policy. 
That, the voice of the electorate can alone declare. As plainly 
as the writing on the wall, our national destiny is impelling 
us to the conquest of Mexico, peacefully, if possible, and if 
not, by force necessary to establish the order of civilization. 
No people, however benighted, can fail to appreciate the bles- 
ings of peace. Correct the cruel abuses which peonage implies, 
give them their lands and homes, and the chance to live by 
honest means, give them, by patient and kindly encouragement 
and assistance, education and a common language; and give 
them, above all, good roads and ready intercommunication; 
for, in the long run, the pick and the shovel compel obedience 
to the law more surely than Springfield rifles or Maxim guns. 

We can surely afford to act toward Mexico, with its 
boundary line of 1,993 miles in touch with ours, in the same 
unselfish spirit we have shown in the Philippines, thousands 
of miles overseas. 

The gratifying result which has followed the bestowal of 
lands and home and citizenship, with a voice in government, 
of our Indian tribes in Oklahoma, would be well worth a trial 
with the scattered warring tribes in Mexico, where centuries 
of poverty, ignorance and oppression have made the poor so 
poor that banditry is widespread. Each of our 41,698 Chero- 
kees received 110 acres of land, and the Creeks, Choctaws, 
Seminoles, Chickasaws and Osages an equal or larger allot- 
ment. They have made homes, and quickly adapted them- 
selves to the law and order of civilization, and are to-day 
among the best of our citizens. The errors made in our earlier 
dealings with the aborigines would naturally be avoided in 
the future. 

Should there be opposition to annexation it could not be 
formidable or difficult to overcome. Exhausted by years of 
internecine warfare, our preponderance of men and means, 
backed by a rigorous blockade, would make the struggle brief, 
and tactful measures and fair and kindly treatment would 
insure a prompt submission to law and order. The brilliant 
achievements of army sanitation have in very recent years 
eliminated the danger of tropical diseases or of typhoid, chol- 
era and other infections. The marvelous innovations in mod- 
ern warfare, especially in the artillery and aerial services, 



would, if the emergency should demand, make easy and with 
the minimum loss of life the forcible establishment of a civil- 
ized, stable and humane government in Mexico. 

Any objection to the enlargement of our domain can be 
met with the statement that the area which Russia rules is 
pracically as large as all of North America from Panama to 
the Arctic Ocean, and much more difficult of access than 
Mexico, while England, through her well selected agents 
governs a still larger area. 

Steam, the gasolene-engine and electricity, have brought 
into a smaller compass the peoples of our continent. The 
aeronaut of to-day can travel from the Arctic Circle to the 
Panama Canal in less time than it took Washington to journey 
from Virginia to take command of the Continental Army at 
Cambridge in 1775. 

In addition, the acquisition of Mexico would bring us so 
near by land to our Great Canal, that far-sighted statesman- 
ship would demand a protectorate over the States of Central 
America, and a railway and highways, to insure defense, should 
approach be interfered with in either ocean. 

Nor should our country purchase one foot of Mexican 
territory. If her people ever were entitled to consideration 
of this character, their conduct in late years has justified a 
forfeiture. Our clear duty is, in the name of humanity, to 
establish by force, since this is necessary, a stable govern- 
ment, and this done, deal with all Mexicans justly and gener- 
ously, as citizens of a territory, until such time as we may 
deem them worthy of state citizenship. 

The States of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, 
Arizona, Texas and portions of Wyoming and Colorado 
were taken by force from Mexico. Texas, after the massacres 
perpetrated at the Alamo and Goliad, won its independence 
under Houston at San Jacinto in 1836. The remaining terri- 
tory above given (with the exception of a strip known as the 
Gadsden purchase of 1853) was acquired by the treaty of 
Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican war in 1848. 
What a stable government has done for the vast area annexed 
and what lack of it has done for the distracted country south of 
the Rio Grande is an object lesson which needs no argument 
to enforce conviction. 




AREA TAKEN FROM MEXICO 

Map showing the territory taken from Mexico in the war 
for Texan independence in 1836 and by the treaty of Guada- 
lupe Hidalgo after the war in 1848. A small strip, known as 
the Gadsden Purchase, was added five years later. This map 
is from Andrews' History of the United States, and is used 
by permission of J. B. Lippincott Company, publishers, and 
the author, Matthew Page Andrews. 



In order that our policy may not be misunderstood by our 
sister republics of South America, the Monroe Doctrine should 
be emphasized by a solemn engagement that the United States 
will never attempt to encroach upon their territory, and will 
engage to join with them, to protect them from invasion by 
any power or powers. 

Finally, the relinquishment of our oriental possessions, 
confining our sphere of influence to the Hawaiian and West 
India Islands, would crystallize our strength and fortify us 
in an impregnable isolation. 



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